The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

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The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019July 21, 2023 1445

I came across this today and broke up laughing. These are seriously clever! Thanks to the Washington Post. I wasn’t aware of their neologism contest, but I am now! Read and enjoy. Pass it along.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

Truman Capote

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.